OSCAR NIGHT PREP | “Up in the Air”
The first title to get crossed off my list of 17 movies to see before the Oscars was "Up in the Air." George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a corporate lay-off professional. He flies in, sets up in a conference room, delivers the bad news, and sends ex-employees on their way. He also delivers motivational talks on the side encouraging participants not to get bogged down by the "baggage" of their lives with his "What's in your backpack?" seminars.
His own career starts to travel towards elimination once a new, young executive proposes to take their company of transition specialist "Glocal" by making their global presence more local. Instead of traveling many miles to lay off workers, Bingham and his peers can simply phone it in by Skyping the "You're fired" message. Bingham's road warrior way of life with his empty backpack is in serious jeopardy.
Along the way, Bingham begins to appreciate the value of connections in his life as he attends his sister's wedding with a woman he's allowed to enter his "backpack." But fortunately, like an airplane barreling down the tarmac for take off, the movie manages to pull up just in enough time to avoid the sappy love story at the end of the runway. Add in a dash of quirkiness, and a heaping of excellent acting, and you've got delightful movie.
So, to meet my compulsive need to rank order everything, here's where "Up in the Air" falls in the list of the six movies I've already seen in my Oscar prep. Better than "Up" for it's superb acting and display of touching emotions, but just under "(500) Days of Summer" which is the better anti-love story of the two.
Here's my latest ranking:
1. Inglorious Basterds
2. (500) Days of Summer
> Up in the Air
3. Up
4. Star Trek
5. Avatar
6. Julie and Julia
Which movies have you seen so far? What's your ranking?
What Will You See BEFORE Oscar Night?
Here is Entertainment Weekly's "25 Movies to See Before Oscar Night" which is on March 7. The list is in the order they recommend watching the films just in case you don't make it through them all. I also added the TOMATOMETER score from RottenTomatoes.com after each as another reference point.
1. Up in the Air (90%)
2. Avatar (82%)
3. The Hurt Locker (97%)
4. Precious (91%)
5. Inglourious Basterds (89%)
6. Invictus (77%)
7. An Education (94%)
8. Up (98%)
9. A Serious Man (87%)
10. The Messenger (91%)
11. Julie and Julia (75%)
12. A Single Man (83%)
13. Crazy Heart (83%)
14. The Blind Side (70%)
15. The Last Station (68%)
16. Nine (36%)
17. Star Trek (94%)
18. District 9 (90%)
19. The Fantastic Mr. Fox (93%)
20. The Lovely Bones (37%)
21. (500) Days of Summer (87%)
22. It's Complicated (57%)
23. The Young Victoria (75%)
24. Bright Star (83%)
25. The Informant (77%)
So far, I've only seen six of the movies on this list: Avatar, Inglourious Basterds, Up, Julie and Julia, Star Trek, and (500) Days of Summer. I have no intention of viewing two of the films: Nine and Lovely Bones. That leaves 17 major motion pictures for me to watch before March 7.
WHAT ABOUT YOU?
Which movies have you seen? Which ones do you feel need to be added to this list? Which ones do you plan to watch? Feel free to copy the above list and post in your blog with your reviews and Oscar game plans. Leave an overview and a link to your post in the comment sections below.
How Does “Up” Rank with other Pixar Movies
We just saw the latest Pixar film, "Up." I am amazed at how they consistently produce such compelling stories. There isn't a bad film among the ten that they have created.
I was curious about how my children viewed Up in relation to the other Pixar films, so in traditional Chandler fashion, I overdid it by creating an Excel spreadsheet with all 10 films listed as rows, and each of the kids names as column headers.
Then one-by-one, I had each child rank order the movies (1 being their favorite, 10 being their least favorite). I averaged the scores for each movie and here is the collective Chandler children rank order of the 10 Pixar major motion pictures, with the correct answer (my ranking) in parenthesis and a quick tweetable quote from each to add a little color to the list.
- Ratatoulle (2) Welcome to Hell.
- Cars (4) I create feelings in others that they themselves don't understand.
- Wall-E (6) Computer, define "dancing."
- Up (5) You got a "run away in terror" badge?
- Toy Story (7) "Extremely dangerous. Keep out of reach of children." Cool!
- The Incredibles (1) Hi, this is Kari, sorry for freakin' out but your baby has "special needs."
- Monsters, Inc. (9) Kids these days. They just don't get scared like they used to.
- Finding Nemo (8) You think you can do these things, but you just can't, Nemo.
- A Bug's Life (3) Here, pretend - pretend that that's a seed.
- Toy Story 2 (10) Excuse me, ma'am, but I believe you're on the wrong flight.
Being the best at something is all relative to your reference group. In the film Leatherheads, Lexie drives this point home when she humbles Dodge by saying:
You think you're the slickest operator in Duluth, and maybe you are, but being the slickest operator in Duluth is kinda like being the world's tallest midget, if you ask me.
This Pixar reference group is just the opposite. To be the best of this group is a true honor, and to be the shortest of these giants, well that ain't so bad either.